Joy in Odd Places

There's something weird that's been making me happy. I don't know that I can explain it, or even that I ought to try, but that isn't the sort of consideration that stops me.

This goes back a ways, about a year. I was walking through the skyway in downtown Minneapolis (habitrails for cold-weather city dwellers with a tradition of good infrastructure) when I saw it.

*wink*

I blinked, a bit confused. I was in the middle of a high-end department store. I hadn't had my coffee yet, but I knew the floor shouldn't be winking at me.

Even as I got closer, I couldn't tell what it was. All I really knew was that it didn't belong there according to the normal rules of things. I was intrigued. No one else seemed to notice.

Finally, I was there, right on top of it, and I could see what it was--a massive rhinestone stuck in the crack between two tiles. I don't know how it got there. All the stories I tried to tell myself got very silly very quickly, based on not much more than the fact that it was just off the corner of the men's underwear display, which wasn't and isn't actually interesting enough to support said silly stories. Or at least, interesting only in the sense that the carefully studied and agreed upon degree of detail in simulation of men's genitalia is interesting. Not much to do with rhinestones.

Having identified it and had my fun with it, I moved on. I don't usually use the skyway much unless I'm getting coffee, so I only noted now and again that it was still there.

Then I had surgery. Then I had complications from my surgery. Then I had complications from my long recovery. Then, finally, I went back to work. I needed coffee.

It was still there. It winked at me for the first time in many long weeks. And despite the fatigue and the stress about what I'd find at work, it made me ridiculously happy. It was still there.

Maybe at that point I identified with it hopefully, this little useless thing that had found a place from which it refused to be dislodged. Maybe I just needed the wink. Or the pretty. I didn't care. I winked back.

More than half a year later, it's still there. How many people have seen it? How many times has that floor been cleaned (over a snowy, salty Minnesota winter)? No one has dislodged it or tidied it away, or even carted it off as a little, portable piece of shiny that "no one" will miss.

It endures, this improbable bit of ephemera, this thing that is so out of place, this emblem of disposable tackiness. It isn't supposed to. It isn't supposed to even be there. It isn't supposed to appeal. It isn't supposed to matter.

But it endures, and it fits, and it accretes meaning all out of proportion to what it would be as described by anyone else. And it brings me joy.

Pass It On

If you only have time to read one short thing today, follow this link. Right now.

If you have slightly more time, know that it's an analysis of the fascist tendencies of the Tea Party movement by PalMD. No, not "I don't like those people" fascists. Real fascists. He doesn't write about politics a lot, but he's been saving it up for this one, and he did it right. You can tell; he got a not-science-y-enough troll in the very second comment.

But that's enough of me. Go read. Then pass it on.

Doesn't Take Much

Yes, I'm fine. There have just been a few of these lately.

Little Earthquakes

We laughed in the faces of kings, never afraid to burn.

Guests on Quiche Moraine

I haven't posted at Quiche Moraine for the last couple of weeks, but we've got guest authors who are more than making up for it. If you haven't clicked over from my blogroll, you're missing out.

The first is Jim Emery, who worked for the Ashwin Madia campaign in Minnesota's Third Congressional District in 2008. His recollections of the campaign, and the implications of the changing technological landscape for future campaigns, are posted in four parts: Introduction (background on the campaign), The Role of Communication, Framing the Debate, and Epilog (a look back at the difficulties of engaging the electorate). If you are short on time, skip to the second post. There are lots of fascinating observations that could only come from within the campaign from there on out.

The second...well, I'll just say here what I said in the introduction there:

Sometimes being an editor is the best job in the world. In this case, DuWayne Brayton sent me something that just doesn't fit on his blog, because it's fiction. Only fiction isn't quite the right way to describe this either. You're just going to have to read it, and it's my privilege to tell you to do so. I suppose I should also mention that there is a small amount of explicit content, but you won't mind. Trust me.

Seriously, go read it.

Dicks, Skeptics and the Problem of Eternal September

Phil Plait has finally posted the video of his speech from TAM (okay, it's been just over a month, but I enjoy being spoiled by the speed of the internet), and some of the reactions prompt me to finally write about why I think his message is an important one. I've already written about why I think "dicks" are important in skeptical outreach. The tl;dr version is that communicating skepticism isn't just communicating knowledge and techniques but also communicating values, which I've also written about here. Sometimes we can't hold those values and not be incredibly angry, and sometimes that anger communicates those values in ways that nothing else can.

Note that there are a bunch of "sometimes" in that statement. As much as I tend to qualify my statements in the interest of accuracy, that's not what's going on here. Those are very specific "sometimes," with implications for communication.

A couple of my friends commented in response to "On the Utility of Dicks" that they were simply dicks. As much as I love them, and I do, that's not really helpful--or meant to be. Being a dick in general (which is overstating their behavior anyway) doesn't communicate anything except that you're a dick. It stops being a tool when you can't put it down. At that point, it becomes just one more thing keeping your hands busy when you could be doing useful work.

If your dickishness is going to help you communicate the values of skepticism, it has to relate, directly and immediately, to the circumstances that warrant anger. If it isn't suited to the context, or if others can't see how it's suited to the context, it communicates nothing.

But there's another problem with wielding dickishness as a tool. This:

On the one hand, okay, but on the other hand, as a general rule, the other side is not arguing in good faith. They are having fun toying with the skeptics, making them work hard for no real gain. To them, misbehaving is fun. When their current scheme falls apart, they come back with another one. None of them actually believe what they have faith in.

I'd say very few if any holds need be barred when dealing with the "gotcha" questions true believers so often think they cleverly can get by with.

Life is too short to waste on the "gottcha" folks. Ridicule is all they deserve.

Now, before I talk about why that's a problem, let me provisionally endorse this statement from PZ Myers.

Talk to us 'dicks' sometime, and you'll discover that when we get in someone's face and rip into them hard, we already know that we're not trying to convert them to our way of thinking. We actually are smarter than that.

What we're doing is having a gladiatorial match for the benefit of the spectators. Our goal is to show how bad the other guy's argument is in a public demonstration. And that's a good strategy, because no one wants to be that other guy.

That is exactly what we think we're doing. It is even, for some variable but large percentage of the time, what some of us are actually doing. The problem is when we get it wrong. And we will inevitably get it wrong.

What's the difference between a charlatan and an example of skepticism's own Eternal September problem? That's the critical question in deciding how willing you are to decide that someone "deserves" bad treatment.

What's the difference between someone who engages in an argument in bad faith in an attempt to spread their views and someone who has internalized the views of such a person but is willing to find out what might be wrong with them? What's the difference between the willfully ignorant and the miseducated? What's the difference between someone who is out to demolish our credibility and someone who doesn't know yet whether they can trust us? What's the difference between someone who's setting out to obfuscate and someone who hasn't been trained to argue through a proposition to find the truth?

There are a few clear answers to that, but none of them are going to be clear to me in the course of an online discussion with someone I haven't encountered before. They all involve motives and history that I'm not privy to. If I'm playing to an audience, that audience isn't privy either. None of us can know without better evidence than that, and we should be suspicious if we think we do. We should be all the more suspicious as engaging in the kinds of battles we do as skeptics can and will change us.

I do disagree with Phil, by the way, that we're not at war. I think we are, in some meaningful ways. However, I don't think that's any kind of excuse to mistake civilians for combatants. Or to blithely act the aggressor when we're not sure. It's the easy path, but it's not hard to see why it's the wrong one.

It's also good to keep in mind that being constantly under siege, even by choice, can cause its own set of perceptual problems. I've written about them humorously, but the issue is real. One of the most important lessons I've learned in arguing online is that the word "clearly" is a flag for a bunch of bundled assumptions I haven't bothered to unpack. If I think someone is clearly being dishonest, and I stop with saying that instead of breaking my observations down to specifics, I'm cheating. I'm not doing the work. I am, in fact, being a very bad skeptic. And I see the shorthand of "clearly" used all too often in these sorts of discussions.

When I praised James Randi for being a dick with respect to the people he profiled in Flim Flam, I was praising someone who mixed extensive documentation of harmful behavior with his anger. He did the work. Anger was punctuation, not the message, and there was never any doubt that his anger and dickishness was in response to misbehavior with the potential to do even more harm than it had already done. That was effective.

I'm not Randi. The chances are almost exactly 100% that if you're reading this, you're not either. I am considered a pretty good writer, though, and I have a track record of changing minds that I'm pretty proud of, given how difficult that is to do. On top of that, I believe that being a dick can serve a useful purpose. I still don't do it very often.

Why? It goes back to the idea of civilian casualties. You can't convert a dead person into an ally. You can't convert the dead person's friends or relatives or neighbors or people who read a touching news report of the death. You can't convert, in any real way, someone who is only agreeing with you in order to keep from being killed themselves. You can't even convert someone who doesn't understand what the fighting's all about.

You can sometimes convert someone who watches you for a while and understands that you reserve your judgment and your anger for the people who will do your potential ally harm--if you can convince them you're right. That looks strong instead of merely dangerous. People like to have strong allies.

Being a dick can work, but only if it doesn't hurt us first--and if we can make sure it doesn't hurt the innocent. Or, to bring it back around and give Phil the last word, "Anger is a very potent weapon, and we need that weapon, but we need to be excruciatingly careful how we use it."

Promoting and Learning from Diversity

I'm a bit quiet, I know. I'm spending a lot of time thinking about a couple of big things that will probably never see text. If you're having trouble keeping busy, and even if you're not, I recommend the following couple of videos from this year's Secular Student Alliance conference.

The first is Debbie Goddard, whom I mentioned I wanted to hear more from after Skepchickcon. Here I got to hear more. Debbie talks about diversity in the campus freethought movement: how much there is, when and why it's important, and how (specifically) to increase it.



The other is a presentation by Greta Christina that I've been looking forward to seeing: What Atheism Can Learn from the LGBT Movement. Greta watched painful learning take place in one movement. She's determined to offer the secular movement the opportunity to learn at less of a cost. Let's take her up on that.

Proposition

In our multiply normative society, friendships that cross gender boundaries offer important opportunities to try on non-gender-normative behavior.

Discuss.

Minneapolis Primary Sample Ballot

Tomorrow is the day. Following my usual tradition, I'm posting my ballot and reasoning for anyone who trusts my judgment and hasn't had the time to research all the races. eVoter Minnesota will tell you where to vote and who is in your races and let you print a sample ballot of your own. The Star Tribune has candidate profiles and links to candidate web sites (and will have returns).

Embracing the Slut

Yay! Muse in Vivo is blogging again. She's one of those people I don't always agree with, but I stop and check my assumptions when we do disagree. And what does she do almost immediately upon restarting her blog? Point me to "My Sluthood, Myself." at Feministe, which I might have missed otherwise. Don't you make that mistake.

That’s the story we get sold, right? That women who sleep around are destroying their chances at True Love. Something to do with bonding hormones getting all used up? Or is it that we have so little self-esteem that no one could love us? Or maybe it’s that we’re all used candy wrappers or dirty masking tape. I can never remember.

Thing is: I’ve done it the other way. Until my mid-30s, I was largely a serial monogamist. Not for any grand ethical or philosophical reasons – it was just what felt comfortable to me. That’s not to say that I didn’t have some wild adventures in college, or never went to bed with someone on a first date – I did on occasion. It’s just that when I did, I’d often wake up the next day in a relationship. Let me tell you: not the best recipe for partnership bliss.

I don't think I've ever read a better deconstruction of how romantic relationship/sexuality myths create doomed relationships, and that isn't even the point of the piece, which is also well worth reading. Go. Shoo.

Then, when you're done, read Muse's take on the same topic.

Let the Dead Raise Their Heads

Actually, I might get off my deathbed if somebody played this for me. It's one of those songs that takes my heart rate and does whatever it wants with it.

The Darkness

She didn't believe what her mama said
And she clambered out the window in the darkness

More Readings in Masculinity

Something interesting happened just the other day. I wrote a blog post that wasn't political and wasn't commenting on blog drama somewhere else (not the weird part). It wasn't Pharyngulated or linked to by half a dozen other bloggers (also not weird). But despite all this, my post on "safe" guys is one of my highest-traffic posts of all time and is 80 comments into a substantive discussion as I write this. Almost as many people have thanked me for it as thanked me for writing about waiting for biopsy results.

I think I touched a nerve. Or possibly two different sets of them, one male and one female. And confused a bunch of people who haven't seen the behavior I described, but that part doesn't matter as much.

In any case, I think there is probably a hunger for discussion of the experience of being male that doesn't rely on either the typical stereotypes or the New Ageyness of drum circles and other gimmicks to overcome the taboos of just talking about this stuff. So I pulled together a few. But before I give them to you, enjoy a quick video.



This kid is eight, and he's amazing (even if he hasn't quite figured out how to hold his hands just yet). Of course, he's amazing because he studies and spends his time practicing, which means the price of being amazing is being treated the way boys who dance are treated. Not by the girls alongside whom they learn to dance. The girls love them. But by everyone who doesn't dance and doesn't think boys should coexist in the same places as sequins.

Now, on with the links. First is [long string of superlatives elided for space] Greta Christina, writing about the "5 Stupid, Unfair and Sexist Things Expected of Men." The five are worth reading, as is the discussion of the more minor sexist expectations that she didn't include in this post. Here, however, I'd like to excerpt something a little different, her explanation of why she wrote the post in the first place.

I care about this stuff for a lot of reasons. I care because I have men and boys in my life, men and boys who matter to me: I see how they get twisted into knots by gender roles that are not only insanely rigid but impossibly contradictory, and it makes me sick and sad and seriously pissed off. I care because I care about justice: fair is fair, and I don't want to solve the problem of gender inequality by making things suck worse for men.

And I care for entirely pragmatic, even Machiavellian reasons. I care because I care about feminism... and I think one of the best things we can do to advance feminism is to get more men on board. If we can convince more men that sexism screws up their lives, too -- and that life shared with free and equal women is a whole lot more fun -- we're going to get a lot more men on our side. (Like the bumpersticker a friend once had on her truck: "Feminists Fuck Better.")

What she said.

In some ways, it's easier for women to write about these things than it is for men. Women don't get accused of whining or not sucking it up. We don't get told to grow testes--at least not on this subject. Still there are some guys who talk about it anyway. DuWayne Brayton, for one, writes from time to time, under various categories, about his experiences living outside standard male clothing and sexuality expectations. A short sample to tell you where he's coming from:

She lived very close to the coffee shop and we were both really in the mood for a coffee, but of course my clothes were all in the laundry. She got this almost menacing grin on her face and said she could probably find something for me to put on (keeping in mind I was a sight bigger than she). She ran upstairs for a few minutes and came back down with clothes on, carrying a fucking hippie shirt and a bright yellow, long and light hippie skirt – also wearing a massive, shit-eating grin.

I shrugged, put it on and was forever hooked. It was the most comfortable thing I had ever worn. And when we strutted into the coffee shop, there wasn’t a single person in the place that failed to look. At least half the people there knew me and many of them weren’t even subtle about their disbelief (more than the skirt, most of them hadn’t seen me in over a year). To make matters more shocking, one of my closest friends ran up and gave me a hug, lifting me off the ground in the process. Then, a spur of the moment thing, he kissed me full on the lips – even slipped some tongue. We all sat down, Kaylee sitting close and doing naughty things under the table, when she whispered in my ear that I was causing her to get a lot of dirty looks from some of the women around us. Long story short, when we headed back to her place, a couple of girls went with us, along with my rather voraciously welcoming friend Chris. Fun was had by all.

In addition to his personal experiences, DuWayne writes well about the intersection of gender expectations and mental health.

Sex In The Public Square has a new blogger who is also writing about the masculine experience. (Interesting to note the intersection of writing about masculinity and writing about sex. Are the taboos surrounding masculinity strong enough that they're only tackled by habitual taboo breakers?) Richard Newman only has a few posts up so far, but they are quite evocative.

My lover and I did not go out to dinner that night; we talked instead. She was the one person in my life with whom I had been, with whom I could be, completely honest, and so even though I wanted to, I did not know how to withhold from her what had been going on inside me. I told her what I had seen myself doing to her--though in less detail than I have described here--and how scared I was because I had no idea where the vision had come from, because it had never occurred to me that such violence might be in me; and I am, again, as I write this now, more than twenty five years later, as I am every time I tell this story, awestruck, literally awestruck, by the strength and compassion, by the depth and breadth of the love that my lover showed me that night. It is still hard for me to believe that she did not immediately leave for home when I told her what had been going on inside my head, that she was able to sit alone with me in my bedroom, knowing what I had seen, and feel safe talking with me--and I know she felt safe because she told me so--and we talked until I don’t remember what hour of the morning, but nothing we said brought me any closer to understanding what might have triggered the visions I had seen.

They are, in fact, what you'd expect from a man who turned to poetry after discovering that, while editors loved his book on the topic of masculinity, not a one of them thought they could sell it to their own publishing house, much less the public. Happily for us, he plans to excerpt the book at SitPS.

If you appreciate these, tell the authors. Tell me too, and I'll continue to look out for more good writing on the topic.

And finally, one more boy who dances and does it damned well (plus a thanks to Tammi, who pointed me to these videos).

Who Could Ever, Ever Ask for More?

This seemed rather appropriate to the discussion on my post about "safe" guys. If you haven't read the comments, I highly recommend them. It's gotten very interesting.

Coin Operated Boy

Love without complications galore.

No More "Safe" Guys

Over the last few weeks, I've had a number of conversations with my male friends about them being called "safe," or in one case, a "safety blanket." Don't know what I'm talking about? Celebrate.

This is the phenomenon in which a (generally young) woman dismisses her behavior around a guy as "Oh, that's just so-and-so. He's safe." It always sounds like it's meant to be a compliment, but there's very little like it to bring out the bitter in a guy even decades after the fact. It took explaining the concept of "safe" to the wife of one of these friends for me to really figure out why.

Read the rest at Quiche Moraine.

For Juniper

Depression is much like that abusive significant other. It's always there, even after all your friends have gone home. It's waiting for you after a day out or even the rare short vacation. And it never, ever stops lying to you*.

The lies are the worst part, the little whispers in your ear that tell you you're nothing--not good enough, not loveable enough, not smart enough, not strong enough--not whatever it is you would need to be to get away. Because it doesn't want you to get away. It doesn't like it when you turn your back for even a second, when you're happy for just a moment without it. It doesn't like it when you realize that someone else wants you.

Depression is a jealous mate. It wants to possess every tiny bit of you, even if it has to kill you to be sure of you. It goes hardest after the people who love you and want to help you get away to someplace healthier. Sometimes it does it directly and sometimes by whispering more loudly. Sometimes both, because that weakens you more.

That's why it hurts me as much as it does to see Juniper feeling alone and unable to cope. Those are lies--not Juniper's lies, mind you, but the lies of her depression.

Juniper is one of the strongest people I know. She has to be. She's never not had depression following her around, whispering in her ear, yet she's accomplished so much. She's carved out an existence independent of her family's expectations. She's achieved graduate school despite having to clean up the messes depression has left her. She's traveled internationally, and not just to some cushy Caribbean resort. She's shown flexibility, gathering accomplishments in both the humanities and in science. She's developed a personal sense of style and taste that others look to. She's written a blog that in a very short time built an audience that will wait months for her next post.

Those are just the few things I know about. They're things to be proud of in anybody's book, but to do them while managing the deep depression that Juniper is prone to is astounding. I haven't done nearly as well, and I admire Juniper for this more than I can say.

Nor am I the only one. In addition to everything else, Juniper is one of those people whom others (except a few poisoned and poisonous internet trolls) quickly come to love. On top of all her accomplishments, Juniper is sweet and loyal and sharp and passionate. People sit up and take notice when she comes on the scene, and they keep an eye out for her when she hasn't been around for a little while. Juniper is very much not alone, except by the machinations of jealous depression.

Just as it is only that ever-whispering, constantly belittling depression that keeps her from knowing all this on her own.

So, Juniper dear, please, no matter what the depression tells you, don't ever think you're weak and don't ever think you're alone. Those are lies, told not to protect you, but to isolate you. The truth is that you're one of the strongest people I know. You're simply preoccupied with this monster that's determined not to set you free, and your particular monster is too much work for even the strongest person to handle.

The other happy truth is that there are plenty of us out here who want to help. We can't make the depression go away. We can't make it leave you alone. But we can, if you let us, take up some of the work of loving you and believing in you. We are not as strong as you are, and we may not be as accomplished, but this small thing is so much easier for us that we can do it while you continue your fight.

Please let us.

* Yes, I'm going to use dualistic language here. No, I do not believe in a dualist theory of mind. It's a metaphor.

Pain Research Matters

As someone who recently spent a bunch of time debating whether the pain was worse than the narcotics, as someone who saw my fitness level (and that of others around me) tank because of pain, as someone who literally watched my pain be dismissed because a doctor "couldn't imagine" the cause, as someone who was accused of shirking when pain kept me from something I enjoyed doing, as someone who watched the world go by while I couldn't, I understand how much pain research matters. Do you?

If you need a bit of help, I recommend Zuska's post on her migraines and the failures of available pain treatments.

I am deeply personally acquainted with pain, both chronic and acute, and the list of prescription and OTC meds I have taken over the years in an effort to prevent and control migraines, and treat their pain when they manifest their ugly selves in my life, is stunning even to me: Acetaminophen, acupressure, acupuncture, ambien, amitriptyline, aspirin, chiropracty, coffee with lemon juice, coenzyme Q10, darvocet, demerol, depakote, dilaudid, excedrin, fentanyl, fiorinal, inderal LA, lamictal, magnesium, massage, percocet, petadolex, reglan, seroquel, skelaxin, timolol, thorazine, tizanidine, topamax, toradal, tramadol, verapamil, vivactil, vicodin, vioxx, xanax, zonergran. I am pretty sure this is only a partial list as I did not go through my file with the information on all the meds I’ve ever taken since my stroke odyssey began in 2003 for this post.

Luckily, there are pain researchers who also understand. One of them, JuniorProf, has recently started blogging again.

At McGill 3 very important things happened to me.
1) I was suddenly working in the most dynamic pain research center in the world. The multidisciplinary nature of pain research suddenly became very apparent to me and opportunities to translate basic science findings into clinical results seemed more attainable than in other areas (I’m not saying this is true, just my perception).
2) I started to go to pain clinical rounds. There I finally gained a grasp of the horrific suffering of chronic pain patients. It is one thing to read about it, it is quite another to meet these patients and hear their stories. A consistent story you hear from these people is how they are abused or dismissed by a medical system that all too often does not take pain seriously. This inevitably makes their pain condition worse and by hnb the time they finally start to get relief from their pain they are often out of work, severely depressed and sometimes even suicidal. It is truly heartbreaking.
3) I became a pain patient myself.

Go read the rest. If that's still not enough to understand the importance of pain research, you can move on to JuniorProf's Twitter #painresearchmatters campaign. A few chosen Tweets contributed by others than JuniorProf:

• because migraines are like a part time job without pay
• Because pain is not a gift or a blessing or a lesson. It is pain.
• Pain research matters to me because I'm sick of becoming accustomed to pain as if it's usual, par for the course...
• Because we want the chance to be the best we can be in our lives.
• Because it's not in my head.
• Because pain is not a failure of either morals or fortitude. We never "deserve" to suffer.
• Because there's very little more invalidating than "You shouldn't be experiencing any pain." *shrug*

Of course, there's a good chance, pain being what it is, that you do understand. You may never have experienced the failures of pain management, but you've almost certainly experienced the successes. So what do you do to tell the world you support pain research?

Well, aside from breaking the taboo of talking about pain, I'm not entirely sure. That is important, though, even if you only reach a small audience of family and friends. You can also demand that studies like the one that got JuniorProf so riled up are put in the context of the research they support. And you can keep reading JuniorProf to find out more about pain research.

It should be a fascinating, and hopefully productive, trip.